It was a face that no man or woman would ever forget, once having seen.
It was not ugly, but it was thin, cadaverous, and under the shadow of the hat brim, in some mysterious way dreadful. Now Sir Anthony Gyde was a man who feared neither ghost nor devil, but when his eyes met the eyes of this man his face fell away, and he sat in his saddle like a man who has suddenly been stricken by age.
He sat for a moment like this, then, wheeling his horse, he put spurs to it and fled, as a man flies for his life.
CHAPTER VI
HE struck into the high road.
A frost had set in with the evening, the road was like metal, and the sound of the horse’s hoofs rang upon the air like the sound of a trip-hammer on anvil.
A detour of several miles brought him to the main avenue gate of the Hall.
A groom was waiting at the steps of the house; he took the horse, which was lathered with foam, and the horseman, without a word, went up the steps.
He entered a large galleried hall, hung with armour and trophies of the chase; a great fire blazed cheerily on the immense hearth, and the soft electric light fell upon the Siberian bear-skins, and lit with the light of another age the quaint figures of the dark oak carvings that were there when Charles was King.